Motion estimation and CABAC VLSI co-processors for real-time high-quality H.264/AVC video coding

Real-time and high-quality video coding is gaining a wide interest in the research and industrial community for different applications. H.264/AVC, a recent standard for high performance video coding, can be successfully exploited in several scenarios including digital video broadcasting, high-definition TV and DVD-based systems, which require to sustain up to tens of Mbits/s. To that purpose this paper proposes optimized architectures for H.264/AVC most critical tasks, Motion estimation and context adaptive binary arithmetic coding. Post synthesis results on sub-micron CMOS standard-cells technologies show that the proposed architectures can actually process in real-time 720 × 480 video sequences at 30 frames/s and grant more than 50 Mbits/s. The achieved circuit complexity and power consumption budgets are suitable for their integration in complex VLSI multimedia systems based either on AHB bus centric on-chip communication system or on novel Network-on-Chip (NoC) infrastructures for MPSoC (Multi-Processor System on Chip

Efficient Dynamic Compressor Optimization in Natural Gas Transmission Systems

The growing reliance of electric power systems on gas-fired generation to balance intermittent sources of renewable energy has increased the variation and volume of flows through natural gas transmission pipelines. Adapting pipeline operations to maintain efficiency and security under these new conditions requires optimization methods that account for transients and that can quickly compute solutions in reaction to generator re-dispatch. This paper presents an efficient scheme to minimize compression costs under dynamic conditions where deliveries to customers are described by time-dependent mass flow. The optimization scheme relies on a compact representation of gas flow physics, a trapezoidal discretization in time and space, and a two-stage approach to minimize energy costs and maximize smoothness. The resulting large-scale nonlinear programs are solved using a modern interior-point method. The proposed optimization scheme is validated against an integration of dynamic equations with adaptive time-stepping, as well as a recently proposed state-of-the-art optimal control method. The comparison shows that the solutions are feasible for the continuous problem and also practical from an operational standpoint. The results also indicate that our scheme provides at least an order of magnitude reduction in computation time relative to the state-of-the-art and scales to large gas transmission networks with more than 6000 kilometers of total pipeline

Extruder for food product (otak–otak) with heater and roll cutter

Food extrusion is a form of extrusion used in food industries. It is a process by which a set of mixed ingredients are forced through an opening in a perforated plate or die with a design specific to the food, and is then cut to a specified size by blades [1]. Summary of the invention principal objects of the present invention are to provide a machine capable of continuously producing food products having an’ extruded filler material of meat or similarity and an extruded outer covering of a moldable food product, such as otak-otak, that completely envelopes the filler material

Meta-heuristic algorithms in car engine design: a literature survey

Meta-heuristic algorithms are often inspired by natural phenomena, including the evolution of species in Darwinian natural selection theory, ant behaviors in biology, flock behaviors of some birds, and annealing in metallurgy. Due to their great potential in solving difficult optimization problems, meta-heuristic algorithms have found their way into automobile engine design. There are different optimization problems arising in different areas of car engine management including calibration, control system, fault diagnosis, and modeling. In this paper we review the state-of-the-art applications of different meta-heuristic algorithms in engine management systems. The review covers a wide range of research, including the application of meta-heuristic algorithms in engine calibration, optimizing engine control systems, engine fault diagnosis, and optimizing different parts of engines and modeling. The meta-heuristic algorithms reviewed in this paper include evolutionary algorithms, evolution strategy, evolutionary programming, genetic programming, differential evolution, estimation of distribution algorithm, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, memetic algorithms, and artificial immune system